


Funeral Bell

by Klioud



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Death, Mother-Son Relationship, mentions of body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 02:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16589348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klioud/pseuds/Klioud
Summary: Post-Between Frost and Flame.Aglovale dreams of the Otherworld Gate.Mother looks as he remembers her: radiant in ways that no portrait painted of her ever managed to be. Her features are as soft and refined as the way she speaks. The ornaments of her raiment catch what little light there is within the underground chamber on their gilded edges. The thick cape she would drape over her sleeping sons during journeys by carriage hangs from one shoulder.This is not the only way he remembers her.





	Funeral Bell

Feendrache retreats with a treaty in hand and reparations in their pockets. They return to their homeland to fill their coffers and their coffins.

In a better world, Aglovale would have filled neither.

His people protest the outcome of the short-lived war. Feendrache's invasion had caught the citizens off-guard. Rumour runs rampant amongst the lowest levels of his military and throughout the city: they claim that Aglovale's youngest brother had warned him of the coming invasion force. Few are aware of Wales's earlier attempt to annex Feendrache.

Even fewer know of the Otherworld Key.

Most of those who once did are now dead. They are trapped behind the very gate he had tried to open.

Aglovale dreams of the Gate sometimes. More accurately, he dreams of an alternate outcome. Of the road almost taken.

In this dream, his mother steps through the chasm in reality. It is a doorway between realms crafted from his own flesh and blood. So Aglovale does not know from which side of the Gate it is that he steps toward her. 

Mother looks as he remembers her: radiant in ways that no portrait painted of her ever managed to be. Her features are as soft and refined as the way she speaks. The ornaments of her raiment catch what little light there is within the underground chamber on their gilded edges. The thick cape she would drape over her sleeping sons during journeys by carriage hangs from one shoulder. 

This is not the only way he remembers her.

Blood and copper hair fall into her squinting eyes. Over her bowed head, Aglovale glimpses the length of splintered wood driven in-between her shoulder blades. His instincts take over: he closes the distance between them. Cradles her in his arms as they sink together to the stonework.

Aglovale does not know what he wears in this dream. All he knows is that the bare parts of Mother's skin are deathly cold against his own.

“How could you?” he says as he gently thumbs away the blood from her eyes. Some of it has dried in her hair and on her eyelashes.

“How could you?” she says. Never has he heard her sound more horrified in his life. There is a power in her tone that turns the ice within him instantaneously to steam: his thoughts and feelings become gaseous and suffocating. It obfuscates more than just his vision.

The Gate pulsates with power less terrible than that which his Mother commands. The air shudders from the force of it. All the hair on his arms rise as the Gate pulses again and again. Its rhythm is familiar to him. He has the sense that he knows what sound this vibration should produce. It is just on the tip of his tongue— 

Aglovale wakes with the knowledge his mouth could never replicate that sound. 

Hours later, Aglovale hears it. Mother had once told him that the people are a kingdom's greatest treasure. If what she said is true, then he has emptied Wales's coffers into coffins.

The tolling funeral bell agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for your time!


End file.
